《The Return Of The Discarded Billionaire Ex-Wife》全部章節：第 41 章 - 第 50 章

Clara's POVI thought carefully about whether to bring the message to Silas immediately or to look into it myself first. Old habit told me to handle it alone. His voice from three weeks ago told me to break the habit.I went to him.He read the message and sat back in his chair with an expression I had come to recognize as him running through rapid calculations behind his eyes."Cassie," he said slowly. "Has she contacted you recently?""She has tried. I have not responded.""Has she made any contact with anyone here? With the company?""Not that I know of. Why would she?"He took a moment. Then he turned his laptop toward me. On the screen was a photograph. It was Cassie, wearing enormous sunglasses and carrying a shopping bag, stepping out of a building I recognized immediately.It was the building where Edmund Park had his law office."When was this taken?" I asked, keeping my voice even."Four days ago. Edmund did not mention it to me which means either she did not go to see him o

Clara's POVI heard about the board meeting through Silas that same evening. I had spent the day in Edmund's office going through the secondary legal filings that related to my mother's estate and the Moorecroft liability and by the time he called me I was sitting in a leather chair across from Edmund's desk feeling wrung out in the particular way that comes from holding yourself together all day."It's done," Silas said. "The authorities have everything. Marcus's hospital room is under police watch. His personal accounts have been frozen pending the investigation. Vivienne has been brought in for questioning."I exhaled slowly."What about the board?" I asked."Three members who were found to have received payments from Marcus have resigned. The remaining board is unanimous in their support for the next steps. Edmund is filing the civil claim regarding your mother's investment first thing tomorrow morning.""And the property? The house?""It becomes part of the estate settlement. It

Nick's POVI heard about the engagement from Cassie.She called me on a Sunday evening and her voice was quiet and careful the way it had been for the past several months, since she had pulled back from most of her old habits and started showing up for Luke with a consistency that still surprised me even though I tried not to show it."Nick," she said. "There is something you should know before you hear it somewhere else."She told me that Clara and Silas Luther had announced their engagement at a private dinner the previous evening. It was not public yet but word moved fast in the circles both of them moved in and it would be everywhere by morning.I sat with the phone in my hand for a long time after Cassie hung up.I had known this was coming. In the part of me that was honest enough to see things as they were rather than as I wanted them to be, I had known it since the night I stood outside Luther Corporation and watched Clara walk through those doors looking like herself in a way

Nick's POVHe had proposed to her. Silas Luther had put a ring on the finger of the woman I had spent eight years with and the city was talking about it the way the city talked about anything that involved money and an attractive couple.I had read every article. I had looked at every photograph. In one of them Clara was stepping out of a car wearing a coat I did not recognize and the ring caught the camera's flash and she was not looking at the camera at all, she was looking at something to her left and smiling in a way I had never once been the cause of in eight years of marriage.I had stared at that photograph for an embarrassingly long time.My life was a different kind of photograph entirely. The finance manager had stopped softening the monthly reports. Business was down twenty percent from the same period last year. Two senior employees had resigned. The restructuring plan I had signed off on was being questioned by the bank who held the primary business loan and their questio

Clara's POVThe consultancy opened on a Thursday in early spring.Edmund had recommended a small suite of offices in a building in the financial district. Not the most expensive address but a credible one. I had furnished it with the same philosophy I was trying to apply to everything in my new life: useful things chosen deliberately rather than impressive things accumulated by default.I had one employee to start. A young woman named Priya who had come to my attention through a referral from the woman at Luther Corporation who had cried in the bathroom. Priya was twenty-six, recently graduated, absurdly capable, and deeply suspicious of me in the first week in a way that I found completely reasonable and rather endearing."You used to be a housewife," she said on her third day, not unkindly but with the blunt directness of someone who needed the information to feel secure."I was," I said."And before that a business major.""First in my cohort," I said. "I left before finishing my f